The Trouble with Impact Factors

More and more we're being asked to rank journals...and rank our scholarship based on where it's published. One of the most widely used metrics to rank journals is the "impact factor," created by Eugene Garfield in the middle of the 20th century. "Mr. Garfield, though, now compares his brainchild to nuclear energy: a force that can help society but can unleash mayhem when it is misused." There are many flaws with using impact factors to rank journals and those problems magnify when attempting to use them to evaluate individuals. There is a good article in the Chronicle of Higher Education from Oct. 14, 2005 by Richard Monastersky, where he notes"... relying on impact factors to evaluate a person is statistically dimwitted, say critics of its spreading influence. The measurement is just an average of all the papers in a journal over a year; it doesn't apply to any single paper, let alone to any author." I encourage you to read the whole article before you fasten onto this approach for ranking anything. ("The number that's devouring science.")